Long-Suffering Community (Part 2 of 3)

Sometimes we may be tempted to water down in an effort to make Christianity more appealing or less offensive. Today on Truth for Life, we'll see why this approach is more dangerous than the persecution that may come if in fact we clearly teach the things Jesus said.

Alistair Begg is in Revelation chapter 2. We're studying verses 8 through 11. The enemies of their faith came not only from the Roman authorities but also from the Jewish community. Their daily lives would have been filled with little and large expressions of antagonism, an antagonism that came their way primarily because they refused to bow the knee to Caesar. They were living as aliens in a strange land. And you will notice that he mentions four dimensions of their trials.

I'll just draw your attention to them. First of all, poverty, he says, I know your afflictions, I know your poverty. Also, they were confronted not only by poverty but by slander, refusing to take part in emperor worship. That would have been jumped on by their Jewish enemies because the Jews were exempted from their sacrificial obligations.

And therefore they were able to exploit their animosity towards these Christians by constantly bringing them before the Roman authorities and pointing out that these horrible Nazarites, these Nazarene people, these followers of Jesus of Nazareth, they weren't doing what they should. The dreadful impact of a slanderous tongue. Let me just turn that one section removed, as it were, and say this. Let us beware ever of falling down on that side of things. If all that we say in a single day with never a word left out were printed each night in clear black and white, it would make strange reading, no doubt.

If our eyes should close, we should read the whole record through. Then when we sigh and when we try, a great deal less talking to do. And I more than half think that many a kink would be smoother in life's tangled thread if half what we say in a single day were to be left forever unsaid. That's why the New Testament has a great deal to say about the tongue and about slander. Well, those who are on the receiving end of it must learn not to respond in kind.

These people, these Jews, they thought they were at the synagogue of God, but no, says Jesus, they're at the synagogue of Satan, because he's the liar and the father of lies. Therefore, their condemnation is clear. It's interesting. It says that you will endure this for ten days. You will suffer persecution for ten days. I think it's more than likely that that figure as with other numbers is there as an illustration of, or a representation of, you're going to experience persecution for a limited time.

It may be literally ten days. I don't want to argue the case. But it just seems strange, doesn't it? It just kind of strikes you as strange. And you will experience persecution for ten days.

It'll be like the weather forecast, you know, for the next few days, and then it's going to stop. It may be, it may not. But in keeping with all of the other use of numbers in the book, there's a chance that that is so. The animosity against them was so great, the persecution so fierce, that prison would in certain cases give way to death.

And these people, he says, are going to have to prepare themselves for the possibility of martyrdom. Those of you who have done church history will know that here we are in Smyrna at the site of one of the most famous Christian martyrs throughout all of the ages, namely Polycarp, who was martyred as the Bishop of Smyrna. The people who were able to do the chronology on it reckon that Polycarp was at least a member of the community at the time that this letter was written and would have been received. Therefore, he, along with others, if he wasn't by this time in leadership, would have been sitting and listening as the letter was read. I wonder, did he pay particular attention to it? I wonder, did it ever cross his mind?

I tell you that the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution. Polycarp sat out there. I wonder what he felt. Because history records that in February of AD 156, Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna by this time, who had been encouraged by those who loved him to go away into hiding because of the antagonism of the Roman authorities, was ferreted out of his hiding place. The officer that was given the responsibility of bringing him back to the office of the proconsul said to him on the way, Polycarp, why don't you just recant? Have respect to your age, Polycarp.

You don't have to go through this. What harm can it do, he said, to sacrifice to the emperor? Polycarp said no. Brought before the proconsul in the amphitheater, he was urged again to recant. Swear, and I will release you. Revile the Christ. Polycarp replied 86 years now, I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my king who saved me?

That's the answer. The proconsul persisted, swear by the genius of season. I have wild beasts. If you will not change your mind, I will throw you to them. Polycarp replied, bid them be brought. Says the proconsul, as you despise the beasts, unless you change your mind, I make you to be destroyed by fire.

And infuriated members of the crowd, Jews and Gentles alike, began gathering wood for the fire, shouting, burn them. And Polycarp stood by the stake. He said, don't tie me to it.

You don't need to. And he stood by the stake as they lit the fire underneath him and he prayed, O Lord Almighty God, the Father, of your beloved Son Jesus Christ, through whom we have received a knowledge of thee, I thank you that you have thought me worthy this day and this hour to share the cup of thy Christ among the number of thy witnesses. And as the wind blew, it was blowing the flame away from him, adding to the length of time that it was taking him to burn. And a soldier, presumably with some sense of compassion, reached forward and ran him through with his sword.

In order to protect him from further misery. Well, that seems long ago and far away, doesn't it? And even as we've watched these videos throughout the week of the persecuted church, of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, living with the prospect and reality of poverty and slander, of persecution, of imprisonment, and of death, we find ourselves saying, there's little likelihood of that happening in Bolton in the near future. I'm not sure that much of this has been going on in the west of Scotland. I'm not sure that if you go down to Cornwall, you're going to find great marauding bands searching out the local clergy, herding them off and grabbing a few of their congregation on the way, tyrannizing them, persecuting them, slandering them, and so on. Why not? Well, you can think about that in part for your homework. Certainly, we have no reason to wish upon ourselves persecution.

Certainly, it would be wrong to contrive anything in order somehow or another to assuage a guilty conscience that given that this person over here is taking such a beating, maybe if I can get at least a kick in the seat of the pants, I'll feel a little better about the circumstances and be able to empathize more. What he would have thought of the church in the twenty-first century is conjecture, and I say this with great guardedness, but say it I think I must. As long as ministers in the pulpits trim their faith and their sermons to the prevailing theological wind, as long as we dilute the hard sayings of Jesus so as to make them seeker-friendly, as long as we are prepared to blend with the culture, to laugh at its jokes, to share in its immorality, in short, as long as we choose to live with compromise, we need fear, no possibility of slander, imprisonment, and death.

We can frankly just relax, but if we are prepared in our pulpits first to lead our people in a strong stand in a world of pluralism concerning the exclusivity of the claims of Christ, if we are prepared in our pulpits to lead our people in a dirty world to take a strong stand concerning the purity that is represented in following Christ, if we are prepared in our pulpits to take a strong stand in leading our people concerning the sufficiency and authority of the Scriptures, then we may want to keep the letter to Smyrna Handy. Face it, folks, we're benign. We're a sideline.

We're a darkened building. We're a crumbling notice board. We're a funny little group of people at the Mother's Union, spending time at our daffodil tea and eating large lumps of shortbread. You say, you got a problem with shortbread? No, I like shortbread. Problem with daffodils?

No, I like daffodils. Problem with the Mother's Union? Absolutely not. I love mothers. They want to have a union, that's fine.

I don't know why I picked on them, and I'm sorry. But what I'm just saying is that, oh God, come and show us how to do it and show us what to do, not so that we may bring upon ourselves this experience, but so that we may cut ice, so that we may live on the edge, so that we may push things out, you know? It's all about leadership. Pastors, do you want to lead your people, or do you want to be liked by your people? Do you want to teach your people, or do you want simply to give them porridge with lots of sugar? Do you want to train the flock, or do you want to tickle the flock?

Come on, let's help each other. The days are short, the night comes when no one can work, and down through the corridors of time, our gaze settles on this little dad's army in Smyrna. I know your situation, he says, remember, I'm the first and the last, I'm the resurrection from the dead. I know that you're poor, I know that you face slander, I know that you're experiencing imprisonment, about to, I know that death stands at your door. And here I want to tell you two things, he says, do not be afraid, do not be afraid.

Jesus told his disciples, you don't need to be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, the only one you need to fear is he who can cast you down into hell. Paul refers to his death as he writes his swan song in 2 Timothy, he says to Timothy, the time for my departure is at hand, I'm soon to be poured out like a drink offering. The word for departure is annalucis. It's the same word that would be used for striking camp, folding up the tent and going to your permanent residence. The same word that would be used for unyoking oxen at the end of the burden of the day. The same word that would be used for the weighing of anchor and heading home into the safety of the harbor. And this is Paul as he looks at death, he says, I'm going to be unyoked, I'm going to strike camp, I'm going to my permanent residence.

Jesus is made of death, a narrow sunlit strip between the goodbyes of yesterday and the hollows of tomorrow. Wonderful picture in the old days in places like Greenock or Londonderry in Northern Ireland when the husband had gone off to Canada or to somewhere else in North America, leaving behind his wife, preparing the opportunity over there, finally sending word, calling her to come. And you have these wonderful black and white pictures that you can find in books. And you can see the tender at the jetty in Derry. And you can see this picture and there are no words, there need be no words, but you look at the faces of the family, the father and the mother, as they bring their daughter now to entrust her to the tender. And all of the sadness as she gets on this tender and goes out across the ocean. But of course that sadness on this side is more than matched by the sense of expectation and joy at the far side, for there is one waiting there for her to welcome her with open arms. And in all of the joy of that reunion, it mitigates the sadness of that scene, which they've left behind. This is death for the Christian.

Sure, it's going to be sad to leave. If somebody was put in a bus party for heaven together right now, we probably, none of us would be diving for the front seat. We understand that we love life and we love these things. We don't want them to be our chains, we want them to be our guides. But we're looking forward to the day when we will go and we will see him and we will be made like him. That's why Paul said, to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Don't be afraid, he says.

Woody Allen, the American playwright and cynic, says, it's not that I'm afraid to die, it's just that I don't want to be there when it happens. And one of the great opportunities for us in contemporary culture is to live in the face of these circumstances, with a whole different dimension, because we have been caught up with him who is the resurrection and life. Do not be afraid. And then also his word of exhortation is do be faithful. Do be faithful. Be faithful even to the point of death.

Providence is a soft pillow. All the days of our lives are written in his book before one of them came to be. The future comes in at the rate of 60 seconds a minute. How long do I have to be faithful for? 60 seconds.

Right? And then for the next 60 seconds. But don't get alarmed that you're only 17, and now somebody just came and told you that you've got to be faithful to the end, and the end looks like it's 100 years away. Don't worry about 100 years away. Just worry about just now.

Just finish your cereal, for goodness sake. Be faithful. You understand?

What is your life? It's a vapor. It appears for a little while, and then it vanishes. Therefore, seize the day. Not in the way that Robin Williams said in Dead Poet Society, not that Sartre stuff, not that existentialism, not that looking at the figures of the past and saying, these men are all gone and into oblivion, and you will be gone and into oblivion one day. Therefore, seize the day, because the only thing you have is now. Well, there is a sense in which the only thing we have is now, but we know, as we said the other day, that history is not cyclical, that we are moving towards a destination, that we're going to see Christ. Therefore, we seize the day, not because there is no tomorrow, but because there is a tomorrow, and we seize the day in light of all of our tomorrows.

So the Christian life is distinct in this way, and that's why we can be faithful. That's why we understand when we were at school, we learned all those quotes from Hamlet and Macbeth and so on. We came home impressing our mothers by letting them know that, you know, life was a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. And she said, have you made your bed? And we said, no, no, no, no, wait a minute. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

And she said, make your bed. What a sad and horrible way to go through your life. A tale told by an idiot. Is that your life?

No. No, it's not your life. All of our days and all of our deeds are good for something.

They're good for someone. No matter where it is we go, no matter what it is we do, we do it all to the glory of God. Let's be aware of thinking in compartmentalized terms. Let's be aware of thinking that we're at Spring Harvest. That's a kind of spiritual venture, but we're going back to the bank, which is, of course, a completely secular venture that we're here on Sunday, and we brought out the file, brought it out, put it in the laptop, and brought it up on the screen. Religious file, religious activities, religious thoughts, religious aspirations.

Take that file out, insert another file. Now, let's go back into the world where we live the rest of our lives. Not at all. In the film Chariots of Fire, Eric Little's sister, Jenny, is guilty of that kind of compartmentalized thinking. That's why when he shows up late for the Bible class, having been at a rugby practice or something, she chides him.

You remember? She says to him, you know, Eric, I think you're compromising things here. I'm putting words in her mouth. I think that you are allowing your interest in other things to pervert your interest in the things that really matter because after all, and she gives him a kind of dose of the shorter catechism. She says to him, you know, Eric, God made you for himself. The inference being, if you would get a hold of that, Eric, you'd stop this silly rugby stuff and running up and down in the playing fields here at the university, and you'd get in here and help me gather up these hymn books and do holy stuff. You remember how he turns and he says to her, I, Jenny, he made me for himself, for China.

I know that. But he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure. There is an inherent danger in coming to an event like this and listening to the things that are said by people like myself who essentially have our callers turned around the wrong way. If we're not very, very careful, we can fall foul of suggesting to the gathered community that there is a way to really serve God, which is to do it the way we are doing it. And then, of course, if you want a kind of secondary way to serve God, then you can just get on with your business and be a good faithful mom and a loyal school teacher and so on. However, if you're prepared to get really serious, then you know you can come and join the ranks of the funny people. Well, you're welcome to join the ranks of the funny people.

We'd be glad to have more. But the fact of the matter is, be faithful now. Be faithful where you are. My mother, I never heard her pray out loud. Even when we had prayer times in our home, she never prayed. She was a very quiet lady. But she was a great baker. She was a wonderful listener. She had a fantastic sense of humor. She prayed for her children.

And God took her home at the age of 47. I have fought the fight. I have kept the faith. I've run the race. Now there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.

That's what he says. Don't be afraid. Be faithful and realize that there is a crown that awaits you. In the end, a watered-down gospel is no gospel at all. Jesus promises a crown to all who are fearless and faithful in proclaiming and living out the gospel.

You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Maybe you'd like to share your faith with others, but you just don't know how to begin. Or maybe you're concerned about how others would respond.

If that's the case, you're not alone. Evangelism can be challenging. It can be intimidating. That's why we recommend a book called Mere Evangelism. This book offers 10 insights from C.S. Lewis to help you share your faith.

C.S. Lewis is a well-known writer. He was skilled at presenting the gospel to others. This book takes a look at his approach. It unpacks how he used humor and storytelling, logic, all to lead unbelievers to Christ. Specifically, the book looks at 10 unique strategies used by Lewis and suggests how you can adopt these same strategies in your gospel conversations.

You will gain confidence in sharing your faith and learn how to overcome the opposition that sometimes follows. Request your copy of the book Mere Evangelism when you give a donation to support the ministry of Truth for Life. Simply click the image you see in the mobile app or visit us online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Or you can call us at 888-588-7884. And if you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life at post office box 398000 Cleveland, Ohio.

The zip code is 44139. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Jesus never promised to spare his people from suffering, but tomorrow we'll see what he did promise in order to help us press on in the face of trials. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.